“You’re not learning anything from it,” he says. “I can’t sit there and say in 20 years I’m going to need to know his favorite baseball team was this. That’s just useless information.”

Sylvester Brown at Houston’s Black Heritage Society believes the whole thing is being taken out of context and the poem was chosen because it is Black History Month and Obama is our first black President.

Memo Sent Home by School

Beaver still disagrees.

“The ‘cherry tree,’ that teaches morals about trying to tell the truth,” he says. “This poem didn’t teach anything. As a public school system you need to educate people, not teach them little chants and stuff.”

Beaver first voiced his concerns to radio host Joe Pagliarulo on KTRH sister station KPRC. And Gayle Fallon, president of Houston’s teachers union says he was right to do so.

“Just like you couldn’t put something out advocating a specific religion, you can’t with politics either,” she says.

The teacher sent the poem home without getting administrative approval and the teachers’ union will not comment.

“There has been a misunderstanding circulating about kindergarten teachers requiring students to recite a chant at Tipps. This resulted when a teacher inadvertently attached a note, intended for other teachers, to a parent communication that was sent home. A teacher reading the note would understand the inference: only kindergarten students whose parents wanted them to participate were “required” to learn a chant.

However, the chant selected by the kindergarten team of teachers was sent home prior to receiving principal approval. Seeking approval is a school practice for school programs and events. After the principal reviewed the poem, along with the selections that would be performed by students at other grade levels, she selected another activity recognizing President Obama –kindergarten’s historical figure to recognize.

Last week, the count for participants was less than 150 students compared to school wide enrollment of more than 1,000 students, and of those 25 were kindergarten students.”